Media programs, including audio-video data, are increasingly distributed over telecommunications networks for the viewing and enjoyment of users. Services provide media programs to users through various video delivery technologies (e.g., streaming). For example, the service may allow a user to view the latest television shows or movies using a media player. After a television show airs, the service may experience a high demand for the television show. In one example, a media program provider provides the television show to the service. The service then needs to transcode the television show before the service can make the television show available to the users. For example, the television show may need to be transcoded into different bitrates. Due to the popularity of the video, the service would like to transcode the media program as fast as possible. However, if the transcoding is performed by one transcoder, the service must wait until the transcoder finishes transcoding the entire television show before making the television show available to users. A typical runtime for transcoding a two-hour 1080p video is about 48 hours using H.264 transcoder. Also, if a higher video resolution video, such as a 4K resolution or even higher, and a more complicated transcoding technique such as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)/H.265 or VP9 is used, the transcoding time of new video content will dramatically increase.
One way of transcoding the video faster is to splice the video into multiple chunks and transcode the video using multiple transcoders. Thus, the transcoding can be performed in parallel and the transcoded parts of the video from the transcoders are combined into a single bitstream. While improving the time taken to transcode the video, the splicing method introduces quality issues. For example, a transcoding model, such as a rate control model, inside the transcoder requires a serial transcoding, which will be broken by the parallel transcoding. That is, the transcoder independently processes video within the chunk boundaries. Thus, video quality fluctuation may occur at the chunk boundaries.